


the night we met

by bethejerktomybitch



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 11:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15661959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethejerktomybitch/pseuds/bethejerktomybitch
Summary: “Tell me how you met.” Natasha says, looking at him over the glass in her hand, a look on her face that tells him she knows exactly how remembering can hurt and heal all the same, and just like that he’s thrown back in time.





	the night we met

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the song "The night we met" by Lord Huron.

_I had all and then most of you_

_some and now none of you_

_take me back to the night we met_

**part one: all**

****

“Tell me how you met.” Natasha says, looking at him over the glass in her hand, a look on her face that tells him she knows exactly how remembering can hurt and heal all the same, and just like that he’s thrown back in time.

 

The night he met Bucky – it’s not actually a sharp-cut memory, not actually a story he can tell, more like a mosaic of fractured pictures, images sewn together in a crude patchwork of a memory.

 

Steve was running a fever – he was running a fever most of the time back then, actually, but it was particularly bad that night; he was damn near delusional – but he was out anyway, huddled under his only winter coat down at the docks, offering passersby to paint their portrait for whatever money they could spare.

 

Bucky appeared in front of him seemingly out of nowhere – probably he had just walked up to him and Steve had been too dazed to notice – and peered down at him, impossibly self-confident even for the tall, popular eight-year-old that he was. Steve was used to people looking down at him, but usually their eyes were full of pity (if they were nice) or contempt (if they weren’t). Bucky, however, was smiling, simply smiling.

 

“Hi.” he said. “You’re Steve, right? I’m James, but my friends call me Bucky.” He grinned, peeked at Steve’s sketches. “Those look real good.”

 

Steve remembers that even through his feverish daze, he managed a smile and a croaked thank you. He remembers, too, that Bucky pulled him up from the ground and asked him his address. He remembers walking, shuffling along, really, and then he doesn’t remember much at all.

 

“He came back the next day and brought me the schoolwork I’d missed, then read it all out to me when he realized my eyesight was too bad.” he says, and Natasha gives him a soft smile that looks almost out of place on the face of one of the deadliest assassins in the world.

 

“He’s a good guy, Barnes.” she says, and Steve isn’t sure how he feels about her use of present tense, isn’t sure if the tug in his chest is relief or pain. Wordlessly, he tops off his own glass, and aches for the stuff that Thor brought once, the stuff that could actually get him drunk.

 

Good times came after that night too, of course, times where Bucky made him dizzyingly happy, where his smile created their own glorious bubble of perfect bliss, but Steve still wishes he could go back to that one night, the very first night they met. Maybe then, he could change all the stuff that came after, all the pain and hurt and heartbreak. Maybe then, if he decided differently, if he made some other choice, any other choice, he wouldn’t have lost it all in the end.

****

**part two: most**

****

Losing someone, Steve realized over the years, doesn’t happen in an instance. It happens slowly, sneaking up on you piece by crumbling piece, until suddenly it’s too late and you stand in front of your broken mess of a life one day, wondering how it all fell apart so easily.

 

In retrospect, he thinks he began losing Bucky the second he was drafted into the Army. That was the first time he felt that distance between them, like they were standing on opposite sides of a fogged-up glass and could only see blurry shapes of each other.

 

Bucky, of course, told him that nothing would change, that he would write as often as possible, that Steve would be happy and safe at home while Bucky fought for a better world and when he came back they would be happier than ever, but even back then, when his body would fail him all the time, Steve wasn’t stupid. Bucky was a soldier now, and there was an invisible line drawn between them, one that Bucky refused to acknowledge but that was there nonetheless.

 

When Steve finally became a soldier himself he hoped it would vanish again, hoped that they could go back to the way they were, once upon a time in their small apartment in Brooklyn, but by then Bucky had already been to Azzano and had changed again.

 

In the darkness behind the Colonel’s tent, when the celebrations had finally died down, Steve kissed Bucky and told him that he loved him, and Bucky said it back too, but it felt all wrong and even later Steve could never pinpoint what it was.

 

All he knew was that while once they had fit together like puzzle pieces, they were now strangely mismatched, two stars that had strayed from their orbit and now couldn’t find their way back.

****

**part three: some**

****

Of course, that was when Bucky fell and Steve suddenly found himself wishing for the distance that had separated them before. Anything, anything had to better than this all-consuming emptiness, this wound pouring blood without an actual cut to show for it.

 

“Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice.” Peggy said, and maybe she was right, in a way, but even today, when Steve goes down that avenue of thought, he can’t help but ask himself how Bucky even considered leaving him a choice, how that was a possibility for him. Because if there’s one thing he knows, it is that he would’ve fought just about anything the world and Hydra could throw at him if it meant staying with Bucky.

 

(Sometimes, in his darkest hours, he still feels like Bucky gave up on them that moment on the train.)

 

When the plane went into the ice, Steve looked at the picture of Bucky he always carried with him, curled his hand around the two sets of dog tags around his neck, and wondered if maybe now they could finally be together again, if maybe everything could go back to the way it was the night they met.

 

But of course, neither of them was actually dead, neither of them had actually gone to anything even remotely resembling heaven, and so all that awaited him was ice and cold and loneliness, and all that awaited Bucky was torture and pain, and in the end they just continued drifting apart.

 

“You know,” Steve tells Natasha without looking at her, “when I first woke up, whenever I discovered something new, the first thing I wanted to do was tell Bucky about it. I actually turned around sometimes, expecting him to be right behind me. I don’t… I don’t do that anymore, and I can’t remember when I stopped.”

 

**part four: none**

****

That is a lie, actually.

 

He can remember exactly when he stopped. It was that moment when he was on that Helicarrier and Bucky was on top of him, only it wasn’t Bucky anymore, it was someone else, someone staring at him from cold, empty eyes, and no matter how desperately Steve searched for traces of the man he loved in them, he couldn’t find them.

 

“You’re my mission.” Bucky, the man, the _soldier,_ snarled, and Steve could feel something inside of him break in that moment, could feel his already broken and battered heart shatter into a million pieces.

 

This – this was worse than if Bucky had been dead. Because if Bucky was dead, Steve could imagine that he was happy somewhere, that he was just waiting for Steve to come join him and that one day they would be together again. But as he looked at the shell of James Buchanan Barnes, at what Hydra had made him, he knew with absolute certainty that the man he loved was completely and utterly gone.

 

When he went into the river, he welcomed unconsciousness, and when he awoke – that was when he stopped turning around.

 

Before, he was cared of not seeing Bucky when he turned. Now though, he’s scared of seeing him. There’s no way he can handle another look into those empty eyes that once looked at him full of love.

 

“I lost him, Natasha.” he whispers. “He’s gone. He’s gone, and there’s nothing left.”

 

Natasha doesn’t say anything, and in a way that’s an answer too.

 

_I don’t know what I’m supposed to do_

_haunted by the ghost of you_

_take me back to the night we met_


End file.
